The increase in skeletal size and muscular strength is especially salient for the social lives of boys, who gain 50% more muscle mass during their growth spurt than do girls. However, for girls, the growth spurt starts on the average around 9.6 years, whereas for boys it begins around 11.7 years. The peak of growth occurs around 12 years for girls and 14 years for boys. Because of this two-year lag of boys behind girls, the early adolescent girl is typically taller than the male, contradicting the American cultural stereotype of a taller, stronger male. This sets the stage for adjustment problems among some early adolescent males who may resent their earlier maturing female counterparts and aggressively act out to compensate for their felt inadequacy (Mazur & Cherpak, 1995; Rekers, 1992).

As a group, adolescent males with lower levels of physical strength have more generalized tensions, physical symptoms, inferiority feelings, and lowered social prestige (Rekers, 1992). Clinicians need to be alert to these tendencies and help such adolescents to adjust better and to overcome further avoidance of physical and group activities that can cause isolation and potential deficits in normal physical skill acquisition.

In some North American families, pubertal maturation is associated with increased emotional distance between adolescents and their parents (Steinberg, 1987). Many adolescents experience an increased energy level as a function of rapid changes in their endocrine system (Petersen & Taylor, 1980). This heightened energy level typically occurs around the time of a spurt in muscular development and may create new difficulties for the teenager who needs to conform to adult expectations for remaining still. Some parents and teachers become annoyed by the increased adolescent activity level. Thus, some highly energized adolescents have greater difficulty pleasing parents and teachers than they did when younger; they may tend to rush from activity to activity, thereby spending less time keeping neat and clean. Even after cleaning up, their high activity level may quickly undo their neat appearance. Clinicians can explain these new physical sources for greater physical activity to teens and the adults around them, and therapeutically assist the adolescent in learning self-control in appropriate settings.

Some parents become concerned about this pubertal increase in energy level and associated changes in the adolescent's emotional life. Adolescent girls experiencing pubertal changes report more nervousness and negative moods, more variability in moods, heightened energy, and restlessness than do prepubertal girls (Buchanan, 1991). Some individuals experience greater depression and aggressive affect during puberty, which may reflect hormonal changes (Brooks-Gunn, Graber, & Paikoff, 1994). Based on an accurate diagnostic assessment, the clinician can appropriately intervene either to treat a psychological disorder per se or to help concerned parents understand, emotionally support, and affirm their teenager, who is learning to cope with a new intensity of energy and some new fluctuations in mood state. . .

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